As the 2008 U.S. presidential race gathers steam, here's something to consider:Hillary Clinton may in fact become the first female president of the United States, but she won’t be the first woman in the world to hold the office of elected president. Isabel Peron, President of Argentina, claims that title and is followed by a handful of other women, including Corazon Aquino—former President of the Philippines and Asia’s first female president.
The world’s largest democracy, India, elected
Indira Gandhi to the office of prime minister in 1966. Twenty-two years later, one of the world’s most socially conservative democracies, Pakistan, elected Benazir Bhutto to the office of prime minister in 1988. Both nations elected a woman to office at least twenty years before the world’s most powerful democracy—the United States.Lastly, of the forty+
governments to elect a woman as its prime minister, president or head-of-state in the last two hundred years, only 25% are ‘developed’ or ‘first world’ nations (i.e. the United Kingdom, France, etc.). The rest are ‘developing’ or ‘third world’ nations, (such as the ones listed above), and ironically, are considered to be less socially progressive than first world nations, such as the United States.It's something to think about as you watch this clip of Corazon Aquino’s 1986 presidential inauguration:
